live every moment

The royal city of “Mysore” is a grand jewel in the crown of Karnataka. The more I visit this place the more I fall in love with it. This time the visit to this beautiful city was more special in many ways than my previous ones.

Right from our first ever trip of “Rottikallu”, the game of UNO has been an integral source of fun for everyone in our group (recently got itself named as “Travel Freaks”). It became so addictive among ourselves that even when we were getting out for lunch or leisure breaks, we used to take our bunch of cards with us, and were resuming after we are back. But recently as the trip motives drifted slowly from recreation to adventure, the concentration on the game was reducing (not completely stopped though) only because of the timing issues. Finally in the previous “Bekal” jaunt, we decided that it would be fair on our part to entirely dedicate a weekend to the game and planned the big “UNO NIGHT” to be held at Sana’s own house in Mysore. So our journey to Mysore thus began.

After the usual mail chains and “carry on guys” replys, many key players dropped out, but totally a gang of 9 packed our bags. (Myself, Manoj, Abhi, Adarsh, Suma, Sahana, Sulakshana, Bhavana and Harsha.) We planned to leave a little early by 11 30 on Saturday but the always busy Sana made it only around noon. It was wise timely decision to pick them up at mysore road which saved us some time. So finally we hit mysore road with 2 cars, A Red swift drove by none other than me, who is famous for his breathtaking, edge of the seat on highway experiences (or rather I would call it disasters 😉 ) and Bhanava’s black Santro drove by 120kmph avg speeder Adi.

After some (I meant UNBEARABLE) persuasion by Sahana and Sulakshana for hunger, we somehow reached Kamat on the way and stopped over for lunch. The jola-rotti oota was really heavy for a drive, but still managed to reach mysore safely by 6. I did a faster 35 min clock from Mandya to Mysore and was immensely feeling proud of that. Then Adi joined us after 15mins only to reveal that they took a break on way at some temple, just to make me realize that I have a tough competition here to face on the way back.

The palace photography: Suhas

Our target was to be in front of the Mysore palace to witness the moment where in all the lights will be turned on which happens exactly at 7, every weekend. Just a few mins before to 7, the till then glowing small lights will be powered off and it will be total darkness. But when the clock ticks 7, all those millions of incandescent bulbs which are put up on each and every border of the great palace will be powered on at once. It would have been a glorious moment to witness. We were almost there, but for our disappointments, thanks to our govt., the guards said that due to shortage of power supply, lights will be turned on only on Sundays now. One exclamation of frustration of all S and F words came out and burned down slowly from each one of us. After the emotional recovery, I started exploring Sana’s new Canon DSLR by taking shots of palace with different iso settings and whatso ever, later the subject got replaced by bhavana and sulakshana. Man that camera is awesome and not sure when my poor credit card is going to take the burden. Later after a lazy stroll and discussion we decided to go to Chamundi hills for a night drive.

At Chamundi hills photography: Harsha

This Chamundi hill is not new for me. But I had a special kind of thirst that I must visit this place in night and experience the silence and calmness that it offers especially during night. The urge was more to walk all along the path till hill top, however it did not happen, though we drove all the way up. Me and Adarsh took different paths and met at a viewpoint midway where we spent most of the time figuring out different structures of mysore by their lights. Stung by the serenity of night, forcibly I drove with them to the hill top. For my surprise the place was so much with people, most of them youngsters and looked like couples. What a place it must be for the young lovers to visit during such a time of day. Really there is no other city which offers so much romantism to a soul. I so envy the inhabitants of this great LOVE city. The whole experience had made me dumb struck and literally SILENT. It also took sana to guess it was a specific song and some past memory was the culprit which made my mood swing, but surely it was the beauty of the very city that swung me. (Well sana, guess I have moved on in term of getting haunted by memories u see 😛 ) I was LOST. Time was running, and we were yet to finish our dinner and go back home for our UNO night ASAP, but none were ready to leave the place even though it was chilling cold. It took some some bajji’s, jola’s and chirumuri’s to finally make us drag ourselves into the cars. Thanks to Adi again, the drive down was amazing. It was riskier, but the fruit never tastes good without some adventure. We just switched off our headlights and descended back to the city. It was a dark silent night and 2 cars coming down without lights. One can imagine the real fun involved. However the vehicles passing by were forcing us to turn on periodically but most of the time we managed to have fun.

Adi has impressed everyone so much with his skills that all the navigators switched to his car, leaving the poor me to get lost in the unknown roads of Mysore in search of hotel. My google maps also failed me as the hotel we were looking was not marked on it. Finally Shiv, who joined us near Mysore Palace in his male pulsar came to our rescue. The food at the hotel was really yummy and we helped ourselves very well for a stomach full (or I should confess “throatfull”??). It was 11 by the time we reached Sana’s place and realised that the day had just begun, as the primary objective was our “UNO World cup”.

After reaching home, Bhavana was the first one to get ready (I mean literally, face wash, dress change, makeup etc) and came fresh for the game. That moment just gave me the vision of looong night ahead and made me collapse on the bed. As Manoj and Bhavana started the game and sleep started to creep into my eyes slowly. By the time everyone gathered, there was so much noise rising in the room, but only for me it was like coming from the distance. At some point later I totally drifted into deep sleep and all I could remember from the night wassome some tickles and other non sense tricks people tried on me to wake me up. Yes, like a fool of the century I miss the whole UNO tournament for a sound sleep. Though I was not much into this game, the whole lot of fun it offer was missed.

The next day we woke up late and what follows will be followed in another post.

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8 Comments

Ashwini GanigJanuary 8, 2012 at 16:09

I guess a well written travelogue is one which not just gives the reader a sense of the place, but lets him/her get in touch with the subtle feelings of the writer when in that place. This write up satisfies both these conditions, but the experience of the reader is likely to be gently dominated by the impression of your feelings on their mind. I think that is the beauty of an honest piece like this.

It delivers what a travelogue is meant to deliver – the writer’s penchant for traveling and the belief in the need for sharing the experience. Good work. Keep writing.

Happy New Year:). Had been off facebook (like I do every now and then, this time for an extended period though). Wish this New Year gives you enough and more opportunities to travel and importantly to read and write. Have a great year ahead. Cheers buddy:)

good attempt maga.. even i m trying to make note of my trek n travel.. but no luck..
maybe i will also start it off.. add some more pics n minute details.. it will make ur blog more useful n colourful 🙂

Feels like I just walked down the quiet hill seeing before me this bunch of close frens rejoicing under a dark night sky!! Great post to begin writing about ur journeys. Good luck! And yeah definitely looking forward to part 2 of this to know of all the happenings on ur way back 🙂